Supreme Court Ends Bus Segregation: Montgomery Boycott Wins

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down Alabama's bus segregation laws in Browder v. Gayle, declaring that racial separation on public transit violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. The ruling vindicated a 381-day boycott in Montgomery that had tested the endurance of an entire Black community and catapulted a 26-year-old Baptist minister named Martin Luther King Jr. into national prominence. The Montgomery Bus Boycott had begun on December 5, 1955, four days after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger. The boycott was not spontaneous. The Women's Political Council, led by Jo Ann Robinson, had been planning a bus protest for months and used Parks's arrest as the catalyst. Robinson mimeographed 52,000 leaflets overnight, and within days Montgomery's Black population, which made up 75 percent of the bus system's ridership, had virtually abandoned public transit. The economic pressure was devastating. The Montgomery City Lines bus company lost 65 percent of its revenue. Black residents organized elaborate carpool networks, with volunteer drivers running routes that mirrored the bus system. White authorities fought back with mass arrests, including King's, and a campaign of intimidation that included the bombing of King's home. The city even invoked an obscure anti-boycott law from 1921. While the boycott ground on in the streets, the legal battle moved through the courts. Attorney Fred Gray filed Browder v. Gayle on behalf of four Black women who had been mistreated on Montgomery buses. A three-judge federal panel ruled in their favor in June 1956. Alabama appealed, and the Supreme Court affirmed the lower court's decision on November 13. The boycotters rode the integrated buses for the first time on December 21, 1956. The victory was local, but the strategy of combining economic pressure with legal challenges became the template for the civil rights movement's greatest triumphs over the next decade.